CtD Lead Instructor Ramiro Rodriguez honored as Tarheel of the Week

Every week the Raleigh News & Observer honors one great North Carolinian as its Tarheel of the Week. This week it was our Lead Instructor Ramiro Rodriguez! A well-deserved honor for him, as well as a great recognition of all the hard work and successes of our students, volunteers and everyone who makes Code the Dream possible.

Tar Heel of the Week: Tech entrepreneur sees coding as a way to help students achieve dreams

BY MARTI MAGUIRE

RALEIGH

Daisy Magnus-Aryitey never saw herself as a computer programmer. A native of Ghana who immigrated as a child, she imagined it as a job for men who grew up playing video games.

“I compared it to playing football,” says the Durham mother of two. “It was out of the realm of possibility.”

But when she heard about a program that would help her learn coding, she jumped at the chance to find a high-paying job that was also flexible enough for parenting. Just a little over a year later, she’s working in IT for Duke University.

She credits her teacher, Ramiro Rodriguez, for the fast transformation. He’s the founder and lead teacher of Code the Dream, which aims to steer people from immigrant and minority backgrounds into careers as computer programmers.

Rodriguez came to the U.S. from Mexico as a child, and went on to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science at Cornell University. Since moving to the Triangle a decade ago, he’s co-founded his own technology start-up. Yet over the past two years, he’s still found time to teach and mentor dozens of young people, some of whom have already gone to work as programmers. Most are immigrants, refugees or others who might lack the resources to pay for their education or support their families.